Colitis & The Gut Microbiome

Colitis is one of those conditions that plagues millions of people and yet treatments are limited. Part of this is due to our narrow understanding of these conditions.   Because of this, doctors are often chasing the inflammation associated with colitis. This, at the very least, will help calm the symptoms. While this can be necessary in severe cases, it doesn’t address the root causes!   This is what we like to call in medicine ‘the bandaid approach’. It involves doing what is necessary to calm things down without doing anything to prevent further attacks. At this point, with all the new information we have, we can be doing better than that.   The research is finding out more about why these conditions develop. One of the main aspects of developing these diseases are: the gut microbiome!   For those of you that don’t know what I mean by ‘gut microbiome’, I am referring to the different ‘bugs’ and general environment of your digestive tract.

This microbiome changes in response to our diet, antibiotic use, ‘bug’ exposure and previous gut infections. An imbalance of these ‘bugs’ can create a lot of inflammation within your digestive tract. This inflammation can then set off your immune system in a bad way and result in conditions like colitis.

Yet, not everyone who eats poorly or takes antibiotics will get colitis. That is because some people are genetically predisposed for that gut interaction to lead to colitis. Much like any health condition, it is a combination of genetics and the environment.

In this case, colitis is much more related to environmental factors. 

Why Do We Care?

Because if it’s mostly environmental there is a lot more we can be doing about it!

In fact, one of the leading theories on why we have growing numbers of colitis is because of poor dietary habits. What we eat has a massive impact on the composition of bugs and the gut environment we foster.

Regardless of how you may have gotten there, it is never too late to start seeking help for your colitis. Stay tuned for my upcoming post for ‘How to measure the gut microbiome’ and identify which aspect of your microbiome is lacking.

References

1. Bernstein, C. N., & Shanahan, F. (2008). Disorders of a modern lifestyle: reconciling the epidemiology of inflammatory bowel diseases. Gut, 57(9), 1185-1191.
2. Manichanh, C., Borruel, N., Casellas, F., & Guarner, F. (2012). The gut microbiota in IBD. Nature reviews Gastroenterology & hepatology, 9(10), 599-608.